Wednesday, July the 28th, 2004
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Go ahead and accuse me of jumping on the bandwagon, but I think it is time we appointed a Hooting Yard Tsar. There was a time when there was only one Tsar, the Tsar of All the Russias, but the Bolshevik Revolution put paid to him. (Pedants will argue that early 20th century Bulgaria also had a Tsar, but let that pass.) Now there seem to be so many Tsars about that I probably pass one on the street every day. There is a Drugs Tsar, a Railways Tsar, a Homelessness Tsar, a Smoking Tsar, and who knows how many others. And that's only in the UK. Over in the US, where the Tsar made his comeback, the 9/11 Commission has just recommended the appointment of an Intelligence Tsar.
British readers will recall that John Major, the last Conservative Prime Minister, had a bee in his bonnet about traffic cones, for some reason, and set up a spectacularly important-sounding Cones Hotline to tackle the “problem”. His government collapsed and the Conservative Party is still falling apart nearly a decade later. A hotline was clearly not the answer. If Major had created a Cones Tsar, he would probably still be in power.
If you think you have the qualifications to become the Hooting Yard Tsar, send in a full letter of application, headed I Want To Be A Tsar, to our special Tsars R Us Department. Below is a picture of what Tsars generally look like, but don't worry if you bear no resemblance to Ivan The Terrible (for it is he). We won't take that into account.